Would You Like A Hand?

30 | of despair

He couldn't think.

Couldn't breathe.

Couldn't feel anything, and yet-

Everything hurt.

He heard someone shouting, but couldn't think of who - one of the trio? Himself? Maybe it was his own agonized screaming.

It simultaneously felt like seconds and hours of fire, numbness and being stabbed over and over, silence and cacophonous screaming all at once.

And then, as suddenly as it came, the pain vanished.

He could breathe again.

Draco sucked in some air, and then coughed. He felt the ground under him - he must have fallen and then couldn't get up through the pain. He opened his eyes, and he could hear the trio saying something, but he couldn't focus. He was too disoriented.

Slowly, his vision and hearing cleared up.

He was lying on his side, curled up. Across the room, in his view, Draco saw the second Death Eater, finally stupefied and tied up.

"Draco? Draco," Hermione was worriedly repeating his name.

He groaned in response. There was a hand on his arm, and he guessed it was the witch's.

"Damn, Malfoy. I can't say I expected you to pull something like that."

"Go die, Potter," he moaned.

"He sounds alright to me," Ron's voice floated nearby.

Tentatively, almost afraid that the pain would come back if he moved too much, Draco tried to sit up. Whoever's hand it was on his arm attempted to help him up as well.

"I'm fine," he bit out, although what he really wanted to say was "everything still hurts."

There was a phantom pain on the edge of his mind, threatening to come back even though Draco knew that it wasn't going to - the Death Eater who had cast the curse was down, after all.

How did she do it? the Slytherin found himself wondering. He had watched back then as Hermione suffered five times more than he just had. How had she dealt with it?

He shuddered.

"Draco?" it was Hermione. It was her hands on his shoulders, holding him up. She was kneeling on his right. She had suffered enough that it had knocked her unconscious, he remembered. Enough that she has panic attacks now, he realized.

"You're okay?" he asked instead. She seemed to have snapped out of her earlier attack.

"I - I heard you screaming," she told him, not really answering his question.

He nodded anyway. Warily, he looked around at the wreckage of the area. Ron was making sure the two Death Eaters stayed down and trapped in their ropes. Harry was standing by Draco's other side, watching him for signs of injury.

The Boy Who Lived held out a hand after a moment, and Draco reluctantly took it, pulling himself up (and bracing for the wave of pain that would never come).

He tried to push the phantom pain out of his mind as the the other guys got ready to move again. Hermione stood by him, hand still on his shoulder.

"It's not coming back," she said softly.

"I know. I know, but..." Draco could feel it creeping up his bones. "I can't even imagine what it was like for you. What it is like."

"I'm glad you can't."

I wish I...

What? Draco wasn't sure where his train of thought was going. He gazed at her for a moment longer, and then Harry called out, "Good to go?"

Hermione broke the eye contact and wandered over to her friends, "Yeah."

The Slytherin followed closely, not wanting to be alone with the phantom pain. He tried to shove it away from his mind, because every time he looked at Hermione, he felt guiltier. She had suffered so much worse and here he was, his brain telling him that had been the worst pain he'd ever felt and that he should stop to recover - but Hermione was in front of him, still going on.

"You're shaking," she commented lowly.

Surprised, he held a hand out to check as they walked, and saw that she spoke the truth. In fact, now that she mentioned it, he could feel it all over his body. He was shaking like a leaf.

"Sorry - I - well-" Draco sputtered, not wanting to say he was still feeling the aftereffects. He kept telling himself, she suffered worse.

But who was he kidding? She knew exactly what it was like.

Hermione gently took his hand in hers, offering a little bit of comfort.

It wasn't a cure, but Draco relaxed fractionally. The physical presence alongside the phantom pain helped a little bit.

Too soon, the four students found themselves in front of what Draco had announced was "the office."

Without hesitation, Harry blasted the doors apart with reducto and stormed in, wand ready.

The phantom pain became a mere buzz, even though Hermione's hand left his as they rushed in behind the Boy Who Lived. The Dark Lord was a bigger worry than anything else - adrenaline faded everything that wasn't important away.

And there he was, in all his glory, standing ready for them across the room with three other Death Eaters.